


Bye-Bye, Baby Blue

by holtcest



Series: I Wish You Could See The Wicked Truth [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, F/M, Sibling Incest, The Quintessence Field sure is weird, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-07-11 06:20:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15966488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtcest/pseuds/holtcest
Summary: Katie wakes up, groggy and ill, stumbling into the small attached bathroom off her bedroom and vomits up whatever she’d eaten last night. Her throat grips tight, her stomach lurches; the tile under her knees is as unforgiving as the bile that burns her esophagus.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> @GreenQueen2001 and I were talking about that good good accidental pregnancy a la Holtcest, and there was no way I *wasn't* gonna write something for it.

When Katie missed her period for the first time in a while, she really should have been worried. But in the past, whether from stress or whatever forces may be, she’d skipped a few cycles-- so she hadn’t been too concerned when her ‘ _time of the month_ ’ was meant to arrive came and went without incident. However, she  _did_  notice she was kind of groggy and her nausea was still there, so  _something_  was off. Katie ignores the strangeness of the situation for the sake of her sanity. If she didn’t have to feel like garbage for a week, well, it just meant she was on top of her game! Periods were inconvenient when her whole life revolves around fighting in a war. 

The second month, when her lingering daily nausea did anything but fade, that’s when she was a little worried. Maybe it was the diet they’d been on finally affecting her system (or maybe some of the food she ate at the last pit stop they made  _wasn’t_  as well cooked as she thought), but she tried to push past it with exercise and training and research. It’s easy to get into working on projects, to lose herself in arithmetic and formulas, and forget all about the unusual feeling that settles just under her stomach. All she had to do was keep up with her studies. Which worked for a while, until the  _third_  time her period failed to show its ugly head. 

* * *

 

Katie wakes up, groggy and ill, stumbling into the small attached bathroom off her bedroom and vomits up whatever she’d eaten last night. Her throat grips tight, her stomach lurches; the tile under her knees is as unforgiving as the bile that burns her esophagus. Time passes strangely in this half-awake state, where she’s gripping the cold toilet, resting her head on her forearm; as if its trickling by slowly, as her heavy heaves slowly turn into softer retches, until she’s just dry-heaving. Her lungs ache from sucking in desperate breaths of air between bursts of vomit, but when she finally decides to clean herself up, she notices something... different. Maybe it’s just a trick of light and the mirror, but she could’ve  _sworn_ that her stomach looked just a bit... rounder.

Brushing it off (and rinsing out her mouth), she decides she might as well bathe while she’s feeling like garbage. Maybe that’ll help her feel refreshed, in addition to give herself time to think about her health. The water is always shockingly cold for the first minute, but before long she’s scrubbing down her body lazily, mind preoccupied. Perhaps she’d simply caught a weird alien stomach bug that takes a while to work itself out? That was certainly reasonable, but what wasn’t is the slight gain in weight Katie’s made in the past few months. Gears continue to chug along in her mind while she shampoos and conditions her hair.

It takes longer than she would like to admit, but she’s rinsing the short curls of her hair out when she comes to the only logical conclusion--  _pregnancy_. Katie slaps a hand down to the slight curve of her stomach, where a life could be growing, and feels a new surge of nausea bubble up her throat. Matt and her had always been so very  _careful_ in the past (having always used condoms on Earth), although she knew since being thrown into space, contraceptives were hard to come by. And he  _had_  cum inside of her the last time they saw each other--

This is... she’s too  _young_  to have children, and the environment and political climate certainly isn’t  _safe_  for one either. Denial only has a place in her heart for a fleeting moment, before it squeezes and she lets out a shaking breath. How could she have been so ignorant to the most  _obvious_  conclusion? 

The next thing she realizes is that she’ll have to hide it from the rest of the Voltron team. They know she doesn’t socialize, and isn’t ever really away from any one of them unless she’s in her room or with-- or with Matt. Hunk would be smart enough to put two and two together, even if he wouldn’t be able to accept it as it is. No, her whole world would fall apart, and she’d lose all her hard earned friends, and nothing would ever be the same between all of them.

There’s just no  _way_  Katie could go and tell them about this. 

* * *

 

Well, at least, not until her stomach has rounded out so much that even her baggiest clothes don’t hide it anymore. She’d been avoiding seeing the other paladins when she was in her suit; trying to either be the first or the last of the group to get in or out of her Lion. On top of that, she’s had to watch how she ate, the kind of exercise she does, how she walks and carries herself around the others as to not arouse suspicion. It only takes two more months before she has to come clean-- not because she decided to tell them, but because Keith pointed out that she looked on edge and a bit rounder than before.

Her face flushes red and he quirks a brow at her. Her silence makes the others curious, and they stop their training simulations to walk over and see what the trouble was. Keith asks again if something is wrong with her, and she sort of just... blurts out that she’s pregnant. It was anything but eloquent or practiced, and Lance’s eyes look like they’ll fall out of his head from shock. Both of Keith’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline, but Hunk looks a little bit... curious? But Katie can see the way Shiro’s thinking ( _can practically see the gears turning in his head_ ), and she looks away from him, at the ground and tries not to cry. 

He opens his mouth to say something, but Allura pipes up about not understanding what the fuss is, that if she needs to do more gentle exercises then it’s fine, but everyone else should get back to work. Katie gives her a thankful smile, but she knows come suppertime that they’ll all be having a serious conversation.

* * *

 

It’s uncomfortable, sitting in the dining hall and picking at her food. Hunk had made her something different ( _he’d told her how he’d cooked for his mother when she was pregnant with his siblings_ ), and she feels awful that she can’t bring herself to eat it when she’s so anxious. The silence is thick, but Shiro is the first to talk and  _damnit_ , she just wants to sink into the floor and stop existing. 

“So, how did this happen?” He asks, taking a bite of whatever other delicious things Hunk made for dinner. It’s too casual, like he isn’t seething with both disbelief and curiosity. 

Lance nods his head, equally curious and eyeing her with interest. “Yeah, no offense Pidge, but you don’t exactly seem the type to go have  _sex_ all willy-nilly.”

 _‘At least there’s that,’_  she muses, pushing her bangs back from her head and sighing. “Look, I don’t... really  _wanna_  talk about it. Things happened, I’m pregnant, can we please get back to dinner?”

Keith nods, willing to just accept that-- Katie knows that he’s not overtly fond of sharing private details of his  _own_  life. She’s thankful to know that, at least,  _he_ won’t be pushing her for answers.

But Hunk is tilting his head, just like he does when he’s working out solutions with her in Green’s hangar, and her heart feels like it very well may burst from her chest. Both Lance and Shiro are  _dangerously_  close to Hunk’s levels of deduction. “I mean, Pidge, you don’t really get out much when we go visit other planets.” Hunk takes a sip of his drink. “Got someone on the side we don’t know about?”

“Uh,” Katie stuffs her mouth full of food to have time to think (stomach lurching in disgust); what could she even say? She’s not sure anything would convince them to drop it--

“Yeah, you spend more time with us and your  _brother_  than anyone--” Lance remarks in a lighthearted way, but she must look ill, because he pauses his sentence. “...Pidge?”

“I feel sick,” She mutters, shoving away from the table and running out of the room as gently as she could manage. Thankfully, she doesn’t hear the sounds of her team following her out.

By the time Katie gets to her room she’s sobbing, clumsily tapping in her key code before straggling through the piles of useless garbage she keeps laying around. Maybe it was silly to think that she could hide a baby bump from the people who knew her better than most others, but-- perhaps childishly-- she had hoped they wouldn’t notice. And on top of that, she hasn’t seen her brother since before she realized her peculiar situation; Katie doesn’t even know if he’s  _okay_  with her having their child. 

Medically, she knows just how risky it is to conceive one with her brother. Of course she does. Birth defects, congenital diseases, you name it; but she flies a giant mech lion powered by alien magic! Surely something could be done to help make the pregnancy smooth. Especially now that everyone knew about it, would cast their silent judgement in cold stares and pitying frowns.

Katie stuffs her face into her pillow, taking shallow breaths until her chest stops aching and her tears stop wetting her cheeks.

* * *

 

If they know--  _really_ ,  _truly_  know that Matt’s the baby’s father, they don’t say anything to her. But sometimes she spots Lance or Hunk out of the corner of her eye giving her a that  _dreaded_ pitying look, like she’s burdened with a bastard child from a coupling she never wanted. ( _Katie can only image the disgust they’d be filled with if they knew how she **begged** for it, how she’d push back against her brother’s hips and beg him to stuff her full--_) Which is as untrue as anything; she protectively rubs the aching bump where the new life lays inside her body. Katie just wishes she had time to send out a message to Matt, because she  _really_  needs to see him and talk about this thing that they have to address. Will he want to keep it? They’ll be ostracized for what they’ve done, but Katie doesn’t want to give it up once its born... 

About halfway through her fifth month, Katie’s been feeling the full force of her mood swings and delirious hunger pangs; luckily, Hunk is more than willing to cook up whatever disgusting concoction her body demands of her. Some kind of pastry sits next to her on a plate in the depths of her hangar. She’s leaning against Green’s paw, typing away on her laptop, troubleshooting the cloaking device she’s installed into Green. It’s been a little wonky lately and finding time to work on it was getting further and farther between. She didn’t really notice it at first, but the longer she sat there ( _surrounded by soft pillows and a blanket bundled in her lap_ ), something felt... strange.

Before she has time to figure out the unusual feeling, the wind is knocked out of her when the baby kicks a foot up into her ribs. Katie yelps, grabs her stomach-- barely thinks before she’s getting up and waddling out of the messy room. A good portion of her team is relaxing in the common room today, and she looks a little panicked when she opens the door.

“It’s kicking me!!”

There’s a pause in conversation, but Hunk is coming over to her first, laughing just a bit at her frazzled expression. “They do that, Pidge.” He makes a gesture toward her stomach, and she nods; he places a big hand on the high swell of her abdomen and feels the tiny spitfire moving about. “This is great!”

“I thought it was trying to kill me, it kicked me right in the damn ribs.”

Lance bounces over ( _Allura following so shortly after_ ) to give it a feel as well, and for the first time since realizing her poorly timed pregnancy, Katie finds herself... a bit glad. Her body doesn’t feel as tight as they lead her over to the recessed seats, talk to her about what it feels like, if she’s thought of names, how long does she think it’ll be before the delivery? 

Shiro is rousing from a bit of a nap, looking over to watch them with slight bemusement. “You’ll be the first human to have a child off Earth,” he crosses his legs, leaning forward. “That’s a bit exciting, isn’t it?”

Katie smiles wide, both arms cradling the little life growing, punching, kicking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re drifting in space, arms linked, and her stomach is so swollen that there was a visible tightness to her suit. Her stomach growls, but the only way she knows this is by feeling the contraction and rumble of the organ within her-- and the resulting agitation of her baby.

Too many things happen in the next weeks, where her feet start to ache and her clothes stop fitting. There’s hardly time to stop and get clothes for her, and before she knows it, the delicate alliance they’d built up with Lotor and the Galra all come shattering down around them with one simple visit from Keith. There’s hardly time to feel the betrayal leech into her bones before they have to fight; Allura helps her zip into her flight suit with shaking hands. Katie tries not to think about how dangerous this fight will be, how many things could go wrong, the inevitability of things going south based on the sheer number of people at play.

The life in her womb is reason enough to be sharp as they enter the quintessence field, to keep her eyes peeled and meld better with the group, but there’s only so much she can do when Lotor pummels them over and over again. So yes; the quintessence field invigorated them all, motivated her to win to protect her friends and herself ( _and the tiny life within her-- she could have sworn something changed_ ), but now that they’re all out of it and recuperating on whatever little rock they happened to land on, she just felt  _awful_. The baby seemed to agree, because it was twisting inside of her, as uncomfortable as Katie feels. Sitting in Green, she hums, smooths her hands over the clingy fabric of her flight suit, and tries to think of happier things. They have to get going soon, to regroup with the rest of the rebellion and do damage control on the Galra side of things now that Lotor was out of the picture. 

But... her signals can’t reach--  _won’t_  transmit, there’s not enough power, and by the time they’re captured by some of Lotor’s former generals, something feels off. _More_  than her body feeling strangely strained after being out of the quintessence field. The questions they’re asking don’t make sense, the implications are terrifying-- how much time passed during that fight? Seemingly agitated, they approach her ( _as if by threatening her they’ll get the answers they seek_ ) from where she’s hidden between Hunk and Shiro, a dangerous grin spreading on their faces when they see the swell of her stomach.

“Don’t touch her!” Lance is the first to react, kicking at the pair before being subdued, quickly followed by Keith. They hold her up by the throat, and  _fuck_ , this wasn’t how anything was supposed to go-- Katie’s movement is severely limited by the growing child inside of her, and she scrabbles at the tight fingers that block her air. But even now, with these aliens yelling in her face with questions she can no longer hear, her mind races.

They’ve been gone for  _four years_. Was Matt still alive? Did the Rebels go underground, did they even  _exist_  anymore? And the Blades, the Coalition--

It’s only by a stroke of luck that they escape. 

Katie, at the first opportunity, curls around herself and cries.

* * *

 

They’re drifting in space, arms linked, and her stomach is so swollen that there was a visible tightness to her suit. Her stomach growls, but the only way she knows this is by feeling the contraction and rumble of the organ within her-- and the resulting agitation of her baby. If  _Katie’s_  hungry, she can only imagine how hungry the tiny life in her body is; they can’t last much longer drifting along like this. Distantly, she wonders if the child would die before it even has a chance to live because of the awful mistakes she’s made, if her body would re-absorb the baby to keep her alive. It kicks her in the ribs, but she can’t be assed to make a noise; she’s more or less numbed emotionally. Keith calls for them all, and she weakly answers with her name.

Silence falls over the comms again, and all she can hear is everyone’s weak, but steady breathing. Her mind wanders back to Matt, where he could be, if he’s even  _alive_  anymore. Stars drift in and out of her vision lazily, and she connects them to try and keep herself from falling asleep. Hunk is humming softly, some nameless lullaby that makes her yearn for home, and she doesn’t really realize she’s crying until she feels them drip off her chin. Katie must have made a noise, because Lance asks her if she’s okay, and all she can think to say is:

“I miss my brother.”

* * *

 

They’re finally home, but its more anxiety inducing than joyful. Both for the imminent threat literally hanging over their heads and all around them, but also for the obvious fact that she couldn’t hide the large bump her child makes under her skin, and her parents both look at her with paled faces. Katie smiles sheepishly, maybe even a little ashamedly, and is swept up in hugs and too-firm grips of the shoulder. Her dad asks the obvious ( _he was never a man for beating around the bush_ ), motioning with an open palm to her stomach while her mother elbows him in the ribs. 

“Things happen,” is what Katie says, shrugging, resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. “It is what it is.”

They don’t probe further, but they do immediately make her go to the medical wing of the Garrison for a checkup. The doctor is sweet and kind, even though she seems frazzled, pulling out equipment from a closet far enough down the hall that she’s left to her lonesome for a few moments. The baby is shifting again, making her stomach curl, her breath become a bit short. All she can do is bounce her leg and rub her stomach before the doctor returns with an ultrasound machine. She’s setting it up for a few moments, asking Katie to get comfortable.

Once Katie’s settled on the bed, the icy cold gel is spread on the taut skin of her stomach ( _marks stretch angry red along the curves of it_ ), then presses the flat piece of the wand against her body. Suddenly getting a chance to see the baby moving about makes her anxious, more than she thought she’d be; so she avoids looking while the doctor takes screenshots and types periodically on the keyboard. 

“Katie, don’t you want to see the baby?”

“If I look at it, I...” she squeezes her eyes shut tight against the dim lights of the room, pushing her palms against her eyelids. “...it becomes more... more  _real.”_

A few long moments pass where the doctor goes back to typing, giving her a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Well, do you want to hear it?”

Katie nods, and she hears the click of the machine--

_Ba-bump._

Her eyes snap open, and she fears getting whiplash from how quickly she turns her head towards the screen. There it is-- the tiny miracle with such a strong heartbeat, wiggling around in her, healthy and big and  _alive_. Tears make lazy trails down her cheeks, and she gently touches the top of her stomach, a gentle hiccup shaking her shoulders. 

“Oh.”

* * *

 

All she can remember is crashing from the sky, body curled in on itself to protect the only connection to her brother that she has left; Green shatters the Earth beneath her battered hull, skidding to a halt that whips Katie from her seat and has her upside-down against the windshield. Willing herself to stay awake only works for so long, and she’s blinking the black spots from her eyes and trying to count the ticks that pass before she loses consciousness. There’s no sweet dream waiting for her, no nightmare to grip her heart in cold fear; just darkness, endless and stretching out before her in all its vacancy. If she could process it, she’d think of how momentarily comforting this emptiness is, how it cradles her and consumes her, relieving her from the reality she’d face if she were awake. Its that one thought that has her brain snapping back into place, eyes weakly opening to harsh florescents.

Then next, the pain.

Katie’s everything hurts-- her spine aches from the impact with Green’s windshield, her head throbs with a migraine just waiting to take root, and the space between her thighs is searing with heat and blood and she screams before she’s entirely sure of what that means. Monitors go off beside her ( _a steady_ thump-thump _turned frantic_ ) and a few doctors are holding her down by the shoulders as she moves to thrash on the bed. Vaguely, she can feel the prick of a needle as it slips into her arm, can make out the face of her mother at her side, clinging to her hand so tightly that numbness radiates from where her fingers dig into the flesh of her palm.

After that, she wakes up again ( _had she even been awake in the first place?_ ) with the lights significantly dimmed, that gentle beeping to her side long since calmed. The digital clock reads a crisp, red 2:35 AM, and the realization that there’s a distinct lightness to her body when she tries to move has that machine ripping with hard, loud ticks. Two people startle in their seats ( _distantly, she knows that its her parents_ ) and rush over to her, cooing and saying words she can’t quite hear at first.

“Where’s-- where’s my baby?” Katie grips at Colleen’s arm where its slung across her chest, keeping her seated in bed. “What  _happened_ , is it okay? Oh my god, did it-- did it  _die_?”

“Shh, Katie,” Sam smooths her fringe back from her sweaty forehead, trying to ease her worry. “The baby’s fine. You went into labor when you crashed.”

Katie slumps back into the pillows, a shaking, stuttering breath leaving her. Her hands rest on ( _the much flatter plane of_ ) her stomach, feels overwhelming loss now that her child’s been born. “Can... I see...?”

Colleen nods, vacating the room to grab a doctor to help. In the next ten minutes where her father explains her injuries and the caesarean section she had to have to safely bear the infant, and she’s weeping into her father’s shoulder ( _either out of relief or anguish, she can’t tell_ ), until the door slides open across the room. A doctor is carrying a bundle, swaddled in Garrison Orange and breathing softly, followed shortly by her tired mother. Smiling, the doctor lowers the baby into her arms, and Katie’s breath hitches.

His hair is white.

For several long moments, this confuses Katie; neither her nor Matt have white hair, so why does their baby...?

It hits her like a freight train.  _The quintessence field_ ; and, past that realization, the fact that she now knows that bringing a corpse back to life through the infusion of quintessence causes the color to drain from hair-- she feels just a bit sick.  _Lucky_ , that’s what she was. Lucky that Matt lived, that her baby  _survived_ through some of the worst fights she’s been in, that they even have a shot of being  _happy_. Tears track down her cheeks as the infant gurgles, turning his little head towards her and she curls up around him, pressing salty kisses to his forehead and caressing harsh white locks of hair. The doctor asks for a name, and she has to repeat it a few times before he hears her.

“Ceres.” 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His eyes are glued to the unavoidable bundle that’s cradled in her arms, and he turns to his companion and asks them to give the two of them some alone time. Katie hears a soft-worded reply before they leave the room, leaving Matt and her to stare at each other.

Matt comes back two weeks after the fighting’s done ( _after his son is born and_ god _he doesn’t know_ ), countless ships carrying refugees landing around the Garrison for documentation and relocation. She doesn’t get to see him, is still recovering from battle, sleeping restlessly in the sterile recovery room. The only times Katie finds herself awake is when she’s feeding Ceres, cooing softly to the infant and nursing him with mild discomfort. Sometime, weeks after the day he comes home, her mother is smoothing back her hair, asking her if she wants to see her brother. Katie adjusts where Ceres is laying on her torso, playing with the baby-fine hairs on his head.

“Of course I do,”

Nodding, Colleen leaves the room, and when she’s coming back, Matt and an alien she doesn’t recognize are following her. Leaving the three of them alone with a stern “ _Don’t stress her out,”_ Matt and this new alien enter her room, and she sees him freeze. His eyes are glued to the unavoidable bundle that’s cradled in her arms, and he turns to his companion and asks them to give the two of them some alone time. Katie hears a soft-worded reply before they leave the room, leaving Matt and her to stare at each other.

“…Surprise?” Katie laughs nervously,  _quietly_ , suddenly very aware that this was probably the worst thing she could ever do. Keep a child that was never meant to exist in the first place, without even consulting the baby’s father about it– “I tried to… to contact you after I found out, but there wasn’t ever really time, and I’m… I’m sorry, Matt.”

Almost dreamily, he’s stumbling over to her bedside, kneeling next to the bed and clutching for her hand. Hair drapes over the sheets where he’s resting his head, and she thinks she can see the shake of his shoulders as he sniffles loudly. “I thought you  _died_ , Katie! Four years,  _four years_  you’ve been gone and I thought that I’d  _never_  see you again, and you-” Matt lifts his head here, and Katie heart breaks to see how he cries, all tears and snot and wobbling chin. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop, don’t be, I’m so-” he wipes his face on his sleeve, brings her hand up to his lips and kisses her knuckles. “-I’m so happy you’re here.” Katie’s heart clenches in a way that’s both nostalgic and draining, and she cups his chin in her hand and pats the baby’s back with the other when he shifts. Matt’s attention shifts back to Ceres, to his little button nose and chubby cheeks, and he flicks his gaze up towards her in a silent question.  _Is he mine?_

“I never got to tell you the news back then,” Katie hums, and Matt’s lip twitches. “There was never time, but…” She shifts Ceres ( _her miracle, her reason to fight_ ) until Matt can see him properly, all white hair and red cheeks, and the look on her brother’s face makes all the pain she endured worth it. If she wasn’t already so hopelessly, utterly smitten with Matt, she’d fall in love all over again just seeing the way he looks at their son. “This is Ceres. He’s your son.”

It was said with a whisper, cautious, uncertain if he’d accept it, but before long he’s cuddled up against her in the hospital bed, humming a lullaby he used to sing to get her to sleep after a nightmare. Matt’s arm is tight around her shoulder, and its a bit too warm with all three of them on the bed, but she drifts off to sleep.

* * *

 

Late that night, when she’s woken up without Ceres in her arms, she panics. 

Matt isn’t there beside her either, and her brain leaps to scenarios of  _kidnappings_ , of horrors she’s both faced and some she hasn’t, and she can only vaguely hear the sound of someone calling out to her through that haze. Blinking, as if it will clear the fog from her ears, she opens her eyes to see Matt in front of her, cradling their baby in arms that are littered with more scars than the last time she saw them. He’s pushing the sweaty locks of her fringe aside, and  _god_  she missed how tenderly he’d handle her. Like she was  _precious_ , important, something worth cherishing and treating with kindness. After everything that the universe has thrown her so far, she’s grateful for this moment.

“He’s getting a little cranky,” Matt explains as Ceres makes an upset little gurgle, and Katie rolls her eyes, taking him from her brother’s arms and adjusting her top enough that her baby could latch. The clock reads a bright four-thirty a.m., and she sighs.

“He’s so particular about when he eats,” Katie tells him ( _because its been so long that she’s been handling the baby alone, hardly getting enough sleep to heal and recover from battle wounds and birth alike_ ), watching the muscles in Matt’s arms as he sits at her side. “ _and_  he’s a pig. I blame you.”

“Wh-  _me_? And just who was the one I’d catch red-handed at midnight  _gorging_ herself in the kitchen?” 

The banter is easy to fall into, a welcome distraction from everything she has to think about. They talk about life on Earth before everything, before going to space was the catalyst for the eradication of so many humans, before applications to the Garrison and scholarships and school took away time from them. Katie is content to bicker like this, adjusting the bundle of picky baby in her arm as they go. The conversation drifts to a silence that is as comfortable as it is practiced; Matt’s breathing syncs up with her own and its a relief.

But when he speaks up next, he’s talking about the disappearance of Voltron. How it sent a  _shock-wave_ through the galaxy, how the Galra only hesitated for a  _moment_  before flinging themselves right back into the same old song and dance. So many Blades were eradicated, and the Rebellion had to retreat back underground; they were barely staying afloat now that the Empire was coming back with a vengeance. And among all that, Matt had thought her dead. Katie  _knows_  what that feels like, how it seeps into the skin and taints everything you do, and she leans against him while he talks. The rumble of his voice is grounding, even as he explains to her that he mourned for years, that he tried to move on and sought solace in another. It only stings for a moment.

“I broke up with her,” he offers, stroking her hair where it curls at her neck. “Seeing you again, knowing that you’re  _alive_ – I wouldn’t have been able to keep leading her on.” Here he kisses her head, her cheeks; Katie shifts to leave room for Ceres to breathe. “You’re all I ever wanted.”

“Good,” Katie whispers, and cries, because it felt like she’s betrayed him by leaving. Even though she wasn’t aware that time would shift so drastically around them, it was still as if she had  _failed_ him somehow. “God. God,  _Matt_ , I missed you so much.”

After Ceres is burped and changed, he finally settles down to sleep in the hospital buggy they moved into the room for her to use. Matt sets him down, wipes his chin, slips under Katie’s covers to curl up around her. It feels new, to feel his hands clasping her tight and kissing her head like this– like how she held Ceres for the first time. 

If she focuses, she thinks she can feel the chill from where his tears dry on her skin.

* * *

 

It’s another month or two before she can leave the room, and when she does she’s carrying Ceres around strapped to her chest and heading to a reunion of sorts with the rest of the Voltron crew. Matt’s at her side the whole time, one hand on her lower back to keep her steady. Katie doesn’t have any delusions about telling the other Paladins outright about his parentage, but she’s fairly certain they all know anyway. The conference room is cozy, and Shiro greets them as they come in.

“It’s good to see you up and moving,” he smiles easily, patting her gently on the shoulder and giving Matt a curt ( _if short_ ) nod. “Come and sit.” 

Keith waves to her from where he sits, and she takes a seat to his left, making sure to avoid squishing Ceres’ little body when she scoots in. The four of them make small talk while the others filter in, and Allura lights up when she sees the little baby that’s now being passed around– Keith is holding him while Shiro asks about the curious tone of his hair.

“Ah…” Katie furrows her brows, briefly looking up at Shiro’s own quintessence-bleached hair. “I think, when we were fighting Lotor in the quintessence field, he…” here she trails off, looking a bit distant, and Shiro’s brows raise before he nods, giving the slight bulk of her shoulder a squeeze.

“I… understand. I’m glad he made it, Katie.”

Hunk is handling her baby like a natural, carrying on conversation with Lance easily while he rocks from side-to-side just slightly. It’s endearing to see her team coo and fawn over her infant, to see how Allura enthusiastically asks questions about the process and how they’re born, and its almost normal.

It won’t last, she knows. The war isn’t over. But for now, Katie can have this moment of peace; her team is safe and alive, Matt’s  _finally_  home, her baby is healthy, and she can relax, just for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this was a good exercise for me!! As always, if you have a request, shoot me an ask/message over on holtcestsims on tumblr!!


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